


Project Blackbird

by JustAHumanMachine



Category: Original Work
Genre: Crimes & Criminals, Detectives, Flat out evil science, Gen, Human Experimentation, I don’t update this often, Mad Scientists, Morally Ambiguous Science, Mystery, Robots, Serial Killers, Slow Burn, Superheroes, Superpowers, Supervillains, The protagonist just wants to go home, i’m just dropping it here for now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25750291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAHumanMachine/pseuds/JustAHumanMachine
Summary: (Incomplete maybe forever idk I might start writing on it again)The idea was simple: a group of scientists gathered to make the world beautiful. It’s a shame nothing ever works out like it should.





	1. Beautiful

Beautiful. That was what they called it, over and over until Dante was sick of hearing that word. Not that he could blame them. The project, the project he was going to be a part of, was built to change the world. It gave him a sense of pride and joy just to be standing in those halls, steps away from building something great.  
Dante put his bag on the desk and began to unpack. "Ah, Tessaro." An older man walked into the room. "I see you're finally here. I look forward to working with you."  
Dante felt himself shrink a bit. Standing a bit straighter, he extended his hand. "Ah, um, thanks. Who are you?"  
"Josiah Fulton." He walked past Dante and looked around the room. "I worked with your brother once. If you are anything like him, I will not be disappointed."  
"Um, which brother?" Dante asked, a bit of nervous laughter reaching his voice. He already knew the answer to that question, and wasn't sure he wanted to live up to that expectation.  
"Your elder, of course." Fulton smiled, only slightly. "I am quite glad to have you on the team, young Tessaro. Follow me, I'll introduce you to the others."  
So Dante followed the man down the hallway, looking at the numbered doors labeled with the names of his coworkers.  
"So, Josiah-"  
"Call me Fulton."  
"Oh." Dante cleared his throat. "So, Fulton, are you in charge of Project Blackbird?"  
Fulton huffed. "For all intents and purposes, yes. I am the most qualified person here."  
"That's a bit of a confusing answer..."  
"Well, the kid actually in charge of this thing has no management skills and no attention span, so I don't know how she ended up in charge." Fulton looked up and pointed at a set of double doors. "Through here."  
He threw the doors open. They led to a cafeteria that was a lot smaller than Dante expected. The five people seated looked up from their various projects.  
"Okay," Fulton said to himself, "there's one, two, three, four, five... we're missing one. Where on earth is - you know what, forget it. Attention, everyone, our latest recruit has arrived. This is Dante Tessaro."  
Silence. "Tessaro?" A woman with a ponytail asked. "Like, THE Tessaros?"  
Dante felt the blood rushing to his face. "Um, yeah."  
The woman's eyes narrowed. "Hm." She went back to fiddling with a small machine on the table.  
"Okay, that's Lilith," Fulton said. "You'll have to forgive her, she has some... vocal opinions on your family, says she's from the area. She'll warm up to you eventually, don't worry."  
"Ah, the biologist!" A man yelled, brushing a mass of hair out of his face. "It'll be nice to have someone help with my chemical concoctions. At least, someone competent."  
A woman with glasses snapped upright. "Hey, that was not my fault! You were the one who left that heater on!"  
"Well, that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't -"  
Fulton cleared his throat and both of them shut up. "Now, she is Sonia and he is Adrian. They cause a fair chunk of the problems around here."  
He pointed at a man absorbed in a book. "That is Newton." Newton glanced up at his name, and gave Dante a single eyebrow raise before going back to reading. "Doesn't talk much, but when he does you better listen. And somewhere around here..."  
Fulton searched the room. Dante felt a gentle tap on his shoulder. "Um, excuse me?" A quiet voice asked. He turned around to see a small woman clutching a notebook who seemed to be folding in on herself. "Are you the new guy?"  
Dante nodded. "And this is Emma," Fulton added. "There you go, that's everyone. Everyone you'd want to meet, anyway," he added with a scowl. "Now that you're caught up, I should tell you the first subject will come in tomorrow."  
"T-tomorrow?" Dante said in shock.  
"Yes, we don't want to waste any time. We've already been postponing this, as our subject seems most suited to your skillset."  
"Subject? What am I supposed to do?"  
Fulton waved him away. "Don't worry, you'll understand when he gets here. In the meantime, feel free to eat here, or set up in your lab, or whatever. Goodbye."  
With that, he left the room, leaving Dante standing awkwardly between the tables. He looked back at the group at the table. Lilith was staring at him, Adrian and Sonia had resumed their argument, Newton was reading, and Emma -  
"Excuse me, Mister Tessaro," Emma asked from right behind him. Dante jumped and swiveled around. "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to scare you..."  
"It's fine, Emma," Dante replied with a chuckle. "And you can call me Dante, I'm not one for formalities." Or family names, he thought.  
"Okay, Dante," Emma asked, flipping through her notebook, "I have a few notes on the guy who should show up tomorrow, they're probably for useful to you than me." She handed him a small stack of papers. "American male, late twenties, his name is... oh, it doesn't say."  
"American?" Dante looked quizzically at the papers, adjusting his glasses. "How'd he hear about a small and fairly secretive project in Berlin?"  
"His wife recommended him to us," Emma said. "Said we were the only ones who could really help him."  
"What do we have no one else does?" Dante asked. "I mean, is there no one on the same continent, at least? Even if it's something superhuman, that's one out of ten people nowadays, there would be someone who could help."  
Emma shrugged. "Well, the man's apparently terrified of doctors. So if you brought a collection of human organs with you, I'd recommend you don't show him those."  
Dante chuckled. "All right. Thank you, Emma, we'll have to talk more sometime. But now, I have to look into this."  
Emma nodded and gave him a small smile as he left. Dante walked through the halls, getting turned around a few times before he managed to find his lab.  
He stepped inside and placed the papers on the desk. Sliding into his chair, he began to read through the records.  
"Hey, you're Tessaro, right?"  
Dante turned toward the voice, toward the woman standing in the doorway. She was quite small, with short hair and sunglasses that nearly obscured her eyes, but carried herself with a confidence that filled the room.  
"Y-yes," Dante replied. "I'm Dante Tess-"  
He was cut off by the woman shaking his hand with a ridiculous vigor. "Pleasure to meet you, Dante! I'm Makoto Usotsuki."  
Dante stared blankly down at the woman. "The pleasure's mine," he said, mostly out of habit. He watched the woman as she darted around the room, looking at what he'd set up.  
"Man, this is beautiful. You're the biologist, right?"  
"Hm?" Dante looked up. "Well, yes, I've been working on-"  
"Project Jekyll?" Makoto walked back over to Dante, excitement burning in her eyes as she spoke almost too fast to be understood. "I heard about that, that's why I hired you for this project, we have one subject who could use-"  
"Wait, you hired me?"  
"Yep."  
"You're in charge here?"  
"Double yep."  
"I didn't see you earlier..."  
"Eh, I'm not fond of Fulton." She shrugged. "You should meet Blake, though. You'd like her."  
"Blake?"  
"She doesn't work on the project but, um..." Makoto trailed off, contemplating something. "Well, I really shouldn't tell you that, but I can tell you she helped me start this thing. It's in a similar style to the stuff she does, you know, trying to change the world for the better."  
Dante stared at her. "So, if you're in charge here, can you tell me more about this?" He showed her the papers, and she glanced over them with an odd look.  
"Hm. No, I don't think I can. But!" Makoto said happily, "there is something I can show you, it's something I've been working on, do you want to see it?"  
Dante paused. "Sure," he finally said with a shrug.  
Makoto jumped up and clapped her hands. "Great! Just follow me."  
She left, nearly sprinting, and leaving the not quite athletic Dante struggling to keep up. She stopped in front of a staircase. "It's downstairs," she said, an odd fire burning in her eyes. "You'll love it, I know. I can sense it in you, you have that spark, that drive to create. I'm going to love having you on Project Blackbird." Makoto opened the door and beckoned to Dante. "This," she said, smiling, "is going to be beautiful."


	2. The Scientist

The sound of footsteps echoed through the stairwell as they descended further and further underground. Dante counted the stairs as he followed the small figure in front of him, who hopped down the steps two at a time.  
"So, Makoto," Dante asked, "do you know anything about who I'm working with tomorrow?"  
"You got Tennyson, right?"  
Dante shrugged. "I don't know his name. Just that he's showing up tomorrow."  
"Yeah, that'll be him." Makoto nearly tripped on one of the steps and steady herself. "They've actually had him waiting for a while, we needed you to show up."  
"So can you tell me anything about him? The files were oddly vague."  
"His name's Connor Tennyson. His wife recommended him to us because - you know what this whole project is for, right?"  
Dante shrugged. "It's to study superhumans, right?"  
"Yeah, pretty much. Of course, it's not like superhumans are odd at this point. Statistically, one of us eight has superpowers. Connor's just an odd case. His abilities are biologically based, so he should be able to use them at any time, but he can only access them when - oh look, here we are."  
Makoto jumped down the last few stairs, landing in front of a black door marked with a childishly drawn "DO NOT ENTER" sign. She opened the door and pulled Dante inside.  
The clean white hallways of the upper floor and the dingy descent down the iron staircase had both been misleading. The lab was painted black, but brightly lit by swinging lamps overhead. In the sharp light, Dante saw tables laid out with half finished machines and bubbling bottles of strange chemicals. Large sheets of paper were pinned to the walls, red threads stretching between them, the papers spotted with scrawled notes in a language he couldn't read. It felt... comforting, Dante supposed, familiar in its oddity.  
He didn't have much time to survey the room, however. Makoto grabbed Dante by the arm and drug him toward the back wall, where a large curtain obscured part of the room from view. "Are you ready?" she asked with a Cheshire-cat grin. Without waiting for an answer Makoto flung open the curtain, leaving Dante staring in shock.  
There was a woman asleep on the table, a long white sheet covering everything but her head and feet. Dante froze, then stepped closer. She had been shaved bald, with patches of different colored skin across her face, her eyes closed in a serene expression. As Dante watched, he slowly realized she wasn't breathing.  
"Makoto," he asked with a dawning horror, "is she dead?"  
"Eh, well, yes and no."  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
Makoto smirked. With a grand flourish, she grabbed the sheet and ripped it off the body.  
Dante covered his eyes. "Makoto! Is that really nessecary?"  
"Just look. It's not what you think."  
Slowly, Dante peeked between his fingers. Then he dropped his hands and stared. The woman had looked human, at least, when he could only see her head and feet. Now he could see the torso torn open, showing gears and wires lying still in a metallic silence.  
"It's an android," he whispered. "And such a realistic one..."  
"Gynoid, technically." Makoto's eyes were shining with a childlike joy. "I've been working on her for a while now. I wanted her to be realistic without plunging headfirst into the uncanny valley, but I think she's about ready. Once I've finished the body, I'll install this AI I've been working on." She hit the top of a computer sitting next to the table. "It'll be beautiful, won't it?"  
Dante kept looking at the machine. He knew little about robotics, but he could see the faint outlines of human parts in the robot. "Well, she'll probably need hair."  
Makoto chuckled. "Yeah, you've got a point. Red seems good, and she might need glasses, her eyes are imperfect."  
Dante blinked, then fidgeted with his own red hair and glasses. "Why would a robot need glasses? Shouldn't her eyes be fine on their own?"  
Makoto laughed again. "I'm not sure you'd understand, but I want her to seems human, down to our beautiful flaws and imperfections. A perfect person isn't a person at all. And once she's finished, she can use those imperfect parts of her to do great things." She took a few steps back and gestured around the room. "That's why we're doing this, right? The whole point of this project, it's to take the strange, the broken, the imperfect, and use those things to make this world so much better." Makoto smiled and clapped her hands once. "Anyway, that's what I brought you down here to see."  
Dante felt himself smile. "Yeah, this, this is going to be great."  
As he said that, he felt an odd twinge in his heart. Dante shrugged it off, pushed it down, chalked it up to nerves. "Anyway, I should probably leave now. It's like, what, eleven o clock? I don't even know where I'm sleeping."  
"There are dorm room thingies on the second floor." Makoto led him toward another corner of the room. "You'll need the sleep. You've got a big day tomorrow. Come on, I'll take you to the elevator."  
Dante stopped. "There's an elevator?"  
Makoto opened a steel door, showing him the elevator's inside. "Yeah."  
"Then why'd you make me take all those stairs?"


	3. The Chariot

Dante woke up to the screaming of his alarm clock. He desperately tried to grab it, only to knock it out of his reach. Swearing under his breath, he struggled to a get a stable grip on the still screeching clock until he dropped it, where it bounced under the bed. Dante blew his hair out of his face, then grumbled as he pulled himself out of bed and searched for the clock.  
A few minutes later he left his room, pulling back his hair as he staggered toward the cafeteria. Dante pushed his glasses up his nose as he read through the papers again. Connor Tennyson, he thought. The man has a name. But scrawled across the top of the paper was a single word: JANUS.  
He opened the cafeteria door, letting sound roll over him as he found a seat. Five of the seven scientists were there; Emma was eating a bowl of cereal, Sonia and Adrian were running circles around the very tired Newton and his book, and Lilith had taken up a vigil next to the coffee machine. Fulton was absent, and Makoto, well, she had vanished so completely Dante half thought he imagined her.  
Dante slid over to the coffee machine. He could still feel hostility radiating from Lilith, who gave him a death glare as he reaches for a mug. "So, uh," he said, "mornings suck, so I'm just going to get some coffee and leave."  
"Do it without the small talk." Lilith turned back to what she was doing and refused to acknowledge Dante further, except for one whispered "Damn Tessaros."  
Dante took his cup of coffee and sat down, flipping through the papers over and over as he woke up, trying to put together something from the pieces of scattered information.  
He looked up with the odd feeling that he was being watched. Dante glanced at his companions, none of whom were looking in his direction. He looked over his shoulder.  
Two green eyes were staring back.  
Dante stared at his observer for a second. They stared back, eyes wide and childlike, the rest of their face and body hidden behind the door frame. Dante gave them a little wave. Slowly, they waved back.  
"Dang, that's a lot of coffee." Dante looked up at Makoto with a burst of shock. "Seriously, that drink's gonna be the death of you."  
Dante took a careful look at Makoto sitting on the table. Her hair was a mess - it was always a mess, but now it was a mess that seemed to defy physics, she had noticeable bags under her eyes, and she was slumped over herself, her energy seeming hollow when he remembered how she acted yesterday. He slid her the cup of coffee. "I think you need this more than I do." Dante looked behind him, but his green eyed visitor was gone.  
"I don't drink coffee." Makoto jumped off the table. "Oh, Fulton's coming. Good luck with this assignment. You'll probably need it."  
Dante gave her an odd look. "Didn't expect that from you, of all people."  
"Hey, it's just a fact. This isn't the easiest job in the world."  
"Oh, hello, Makoto." Fulton walked up to the duo, giving Makoto a glare. "I didn't think I'd see you today."  
Makoto shrugged, then turned to leave. "Hey, there's a car pulling up."  
"That," Fulton said, "would be your patient, Tessaro." He put his hand on Dante's shoulder and led him toward the front door. "Now, I'm warning you," he whispered, "everything Makoto says is a lie."  
Dante looked at him. "Everything sounds like a bit of an exaggeration-"  
"It's not. She's dangerous. I only work with her when I absolutely have to."  
"I think that's just because you don't like her."  
Fulton glared at Dante, and despite being taller than the other man, Dante felt himself shrinking back as Fulton's grip tightened. "You've known her for a day, Tessaro. You don't know how dangerous her ideas can be."  
With that, Fulton drug him out the door. Dante blinked in the sudden sunlight, then took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses.  
He was caught off guard by a sudden grip on his lower leg. Dante put his glasses back on and saw a little girl, her smiling face nearly hidden by a mass of hair.  
"H-hello," Dante said, uncertain what to do.  
"Are you the science man?"  
"The what? Well, I suppose I am."  
"Oh, Grace, leave the nice man alone." A woman picked up the child and took a few steps back. "Sorry about her, she's always like this when we meet someone new." She extended her hand to Dante. "I'm Chandra. Connor, get out of the car. This is your appointment."  
Dante shook Chandra's hand and looked at the car. He could see the faint outline of a man behind the steering wheel. The man shook his head. "Connor, I did not drag you out here-" Chandra put down her daughter, stomped over to the car, and flung the door open. "You are getting help if I have to hold you down and make you!"  
She pulled the man out of the car and led him to the two scientists. Finally realizing it was hopeless, the man stopped dragging his feet and stood up straight, folding his arms and looking around nervously. He was tall and had an imposing frame, with a beard and a ponytail of large curls, but the more Dante watched him, the more he became aware of the nervous air surrounding this man, the way his eyes darted to everyone in the group, the slightest hint of freckles showing through dark skin, the almost absentminded way he started biting his nails, which had chipped black paint splattered on them.  
"You would be Connor Tennyson, correct?" Dante asked, holding out his hand to the man. Connor seemed to resolve himself and shook Dante's hand with an unexpected confidence, and Dante noticed a wedding ring on his finger. He glanced back at Chandra. She had one too. "And this is your wife?"  
"Yes to both of those." Connor tried to relax himself, putting his hands in his pockets. "This is Chandra, and this is our daughter -"  
"I've already introduced us, hon." Chandra smiled at her husband, then turned to Fulton. "So, are we going to stay here with him? I heard he might be here a while."  
Fulton wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to her. "This is an address for a hotel back in Berlin. We will provide for you there."  
"They're not staying here?" Connor asked, and Dante could see an odd light in his eyes. "We're miles from any city, are we just going to be alone in the middle of the woods?"  
"Yes."  
Connor stared at Fulton, his breathing getting faster. "Oh. Okay," he said with a forced calm.  
"Do not worry, Mister Tennyson. You're going to be okay." Fulton gestured toward the door. "Come inside, Tessaro here will begin an examination."  
Connor instead went to his wife. "Are you sure you'll be okay? I-It's a different country and I won't be anywhere nearby-"  
Chandra clasped his hand in both of hers. "Don't worry, we'll be fine. Just take care of yourself, okay?" She gave him a small kiss on the cheek, then took Grace's hand and walked back to the car.  
Dante noticed the pained look on Connor's face as the car started up and pulled away. Connor stood there, staring at the car, until it vanished between the far off trees. Then he sighed and wordlessly turned back around. He gave the great gray building a nervous look before taking a deep breath and opening the door.  
"We'll be able to help you," Dante said. He immediately cursed his instincts as both Connor and Fulton turned to him, Fulton glaring, and Connor with a sadness in his eyes.  
Connor gave him a quiet chuckle before heading inside. "They all think that," he whispered. "They all think that at first."


	4. The Chariot Reversed

Dante counted the doors until he reached his office, the echoing beat of their footsteps only sound in his ears. He glanced over his shoulder at Connor, who hadn't said a word since entering the building. The man had seemed to gain confidence, but his eyes still darted around the hall at the slightest sign of movement.   
"Hey," Dante said, and Connor's head shot up. "It's Connor, right?"  
"Yeah." Connor was still gnawing on his fingernails as he answered. "That's my name, Mister..."  
"Call me Dante. So, Connor, why exactly are you here?"  
Connor shifted nervously. "They didn't give you papers that told you that?"  
Dante shook his head as he opened his office's door. "They gave me papers, of course, but they were incredibly vague. Didn't even tell me your name." He flipped on the light switch and gestured toward a table near the wall. "How about you sit there and tell me about it?"  
Connor sat down and fidgeted with a pencil on the table's edge. "Well, uh... I don't quite know."  
Dante pulled out a notebook and sat down. "What do you mean, you don't know?"  
"Sometimes I'll black out, and when I wake up... bad things have happened. I don't quite understand it, but Chandra - my wife, she said I might need to get help. She recommended I go here."  
Dante stared at Connor. "She recommended you go here? Why?"  
"Because she thought I needed help."  
"No, that's not what I'm asking. Connor, Project Blackbird is an organization to deal with superhuman issues."  
"Superhuman?" Connor's eyes went wide. "I-I don't have superpowers."  
"Hm." Dante shuffled through the papers as he racked his memory. "Connor, do you know anyone named Makoto Usotsuki?"  
Connor frowned. "I've never heard that name in my life."  
"Someone say my name?" Makoto poked her head through the still open door.  
Dante pointed to her. "Have you ever met her?"  
Connor shook his head. "I'm sorry, I don't know who that is."  
Dante gave Makoto a puzzled look. "Come on," Makoto said to Connor, "I've met you several times, Lau-" She froze, her hand slapping by instinct over her mouth. "Connor, my bad. I didn't recognize you without the glasses. Hey, Dante, have you seen anyone odd around here? I turned on my project, and, uh..." She looked nervously at Connor and lowered her voice to a whisper. "I lost it."  
"What?" Dante said in shock.  
"But you have a patient now, so I'll talk about that later. See ya!" With that, Makoto hurried away, shutting the door behind her.  
"...I don't wear glasses," Connor said. "When would she see me with glasses?"  
"Let's not worry about that now," Dante replied, although he was worrying quite a bit. "Just, uh, these episodes of unconsciousness and - you said bad things happen, could you be more specific?"  
Connor looked down, and his nervous air became mixed with shame. "No one's gotten hurt, thankfully, not that I know of. But I tend to wake up in a pile of broken things, rotted plants, one time I was in the wreckage of a whole building. Turns out the foundation had nearly dissolved while I was inside."  
Dante stopped writing. "The foundation of the whole building dissolved?"  
"Yeah, that's what the emergency people said when they found me. I was stuck under the wreck for several hours."  
Dante made another note. "Well. What typically causes these episodes?"  
Connor shrugged. "I don't know. They mostly happen when I've had a bad day at work, or someone's being really mean, they happened a lot when Chandra was pregnant, I was really freaking out about that."  
"So, stressful situations?"  
"Yeah, I guess." Connor folded his arms and chuckled a bit, the visible tension that filled him starting to retreat.  
"Okay, how long does the unconsciousness last?"  
"Depends. Could be minutes, could be days. One time, my wife and daughter got in a car wreck. They were fine, thank God, but I don't remember anything between hearing the news and waking up two months later in Norway with a massive hangover."  
"Two months?" Dante asked. "You were - How would you end up in Norway - Two months?"  
Connor shrugged. "I know as much as you do, buddy."  
"And you said you had a hangover?"  
"Yeah, which is really weird, since I never drink. I don't do any of that stuff, seen enough people go down bad paths."  
Dante nodded as he wrote more in his notes. "So there's evidence of changes in behavior..."  
"No kidding. According to my former boss, one time I jumped out of a fifteenth story window."  
Dante stopped again. "And you lived?"  
Connor grinned as he shrugged again. "What can I say? I'm tougher than I look."  
"Are you sure that's not some superpower you didn't realize you had?" Dante thought about what Makoto had told him. His abilities were biological, she had told him, but he didn't seem to realize what they were. At this point, neither did Dante. "Connor, do any of your family members exhibit unusual abilities?"  
"Well, I have an aunt who can walk through walls," Connor said, scratching his head, "but I wouldn't count that because one, she got those powers from a radioactive fluke, not anything genetic, and two, I'm adopted."  
"Do you know anything about your biological family? How old were you when you were adopted?"  
"Twelve."  
"So what do you remember about your parents?"  
"I don't."  
Dante stopped writing and slowly looked up at Connor, who was sitting with an iron grip on the table's edge. "You don't remember anything about them?"  
Connor looked away from Dante, his nervous demeanor returning. "I don't remember, period. My first memory is waking up in the snow at twelve years old. I don't even know who my parents are. I've tried looking, but I can't find them." His grip tightened until his knuckles turned white. "It's like they disappeared, it's like they don't even exist - I don't want to think about it. I don't want to talk about it. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't-" His speech sped up until Dante could barely understand him. Dante froze, unsure what to do. Finally, he reached out and put a hand on Connor's shoulder.  
"Hey," he said, and Connor jumped. "Look, I'm not going to make you talk about anything you don't want to. I'm just going to do what I can to help you. For right now, how about we just take a break and find where your room is?"  
Connor sat still as stone for a second. Then he laughed a bit as he wiped off the tears that were beginning to form at the corners of his eyes. "S-sorry for breaking down on y-you, buddy." He got off the table and put his hand in his pockets. "You'll have to show me the way here, I'm new in this place."  
"So am I," Dante said, and they both laughed. As he led Connor out the door, Dante glanced back at the metal table. He stopped, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. Yes, he was really seeing that, he realized.  
On the table's edge were two dents where Connor had gripped the table. And in both those dents, standing out against clean gray steel, forming the clear outline of a handprint, was a patch of rust.


	5. The Mystery

Dante closed the room's door and sighed. He flipped back through Connor's papers, scratching C. Tennyson next to the title of Janus. He read through them over and over, but there was no flash of understanding or sudden idea to connect the dots. Dante sighed, then stood up and left his room, thinking that perhaps a walk through this large and strange building would help clear his head.

He had wandered, lost in his thoughts, for a few minutes when he almost tripped over the woman sprinting in the opposite direction. "Oh, hey, Dante," Makoto said once she recovered her balance. "How've you been?"

"You lost the robot?"

Makoto stopped and laughed nervously. "Eheheh... I was hoping you'd forgotten about that..."

"How do you lose a humanoid robot?" Dante noticed he was yelling and lowered his voice to a rage-filled whisper. "That is practically a whole person, Makoto. How on earth do you-"

"Look, I finished the robot, I turned her on - that sounded wrong - and then I think I passed out from not sleeping for several days. When I woke up, she was gone." Makoto sighed and scratched her head. "She wasn't anywhere in the laboratory, so she must have left... I'm worried, Dante. The others don't quite approve of my project, and she's basically an infant - well, a solar powered titanium infant, but the point stands, she doesn't have any experience, if the others try to hurt her..."

Dante sighed. "Well, I haven't seen anyone odd - wait, did the robot have green eyes, by any chance?"

Makoto looked up. "Yeah, she did. Did you see her?"

"I saw someone with green eyes this morning. Didn't see the rest of them, but nobody here has green eyes, so I think-"

Dante was cut off by a scream echoing down the hall. There was a shocked pause before Makoto bolted toward the sound. "That was coming from the patients' rooms!" She shouted.

There was only one patient in the building, Dante thought as he flung open the door to Connor's room.

Light flooded into the darkened room.  
Connor was sitting on the bed, hair disheveled, a panicked expression on his face, looking like he just woke up from a bad dream. His eyes were locked on the figure standing over the bed, which didn't seem to respond to the man's panic. The woman was dressed in a black jumpsuit, red hair falling messily over patched skin, green eyes blinking from behind literal rose tinted glasses. When the door opened, she turned toward the light and watched the two scientists. She slowly raised her hand and gave the pair a wave.

"What the hell is that?" Connor yelled. "How did she get in here?"

"Ah, don't be worried, sir," Makoto said as she nervously ran up to the woman. "She's just a project of mine that happened to get out. Perfectly harmless, I promise. I just need to get-" She tried to pull the robot away, only for neither of them to move. "-her - back-" Makoto scowled as she kept trying to drag the robot away, only to dig her heels uselessly into the ground as the robot watched her in confusion.

"Okay, ma'am," Dante said, trying to lead the robot out the door, "I don't know if you understand me, but you can't be in here. You need to go through that door, okay?" He pointed at the open doorway. The robot looked at his hand for a moment, then the pieces suddenly snapped together in its mind and the robot marched out the door, dragging Makoto, who was still latched to her arm, along with her.

Dante chuckled. The lights flicked on and he turned to see Connor, still disheveled and confused, standing next to the light switch and giving him a wide eyed are-you-serious expression.

"What the hell was that?" he said, equal parts terrified and angry.

"That's a robot Makoto's been working on," Dante replied, sensing the tension built up in Connor. "There's no need to worry, it shouldn't happen again. Besides, the robot isn't dangerous. Probably a shock to wake up to that, but-"

"Yeah, no kidding, Dante." Connor sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands. "Is the whole stay going to be like this?"

"No, no, that won't happen again, I swear-"

Dante stopped, his eye caught on the nearby table. Sitting on top of it was a pair of glasses.

"I thought you didn't need glasses," Dante said, and as he picked them up he saw Connor's eyes widen.

"I don't," Connor said, "I swear, I don't know how those got there."

Dante looked over the glasses. They looked like reading glasses and were very clean, probably worn regularly, but had a few cracks in the lenses that had been there for a long time.

"Connor, could you put these on for a second?"

Connor put the glasses on and stood up. Somehow, maybe it was the cracked glasses or that his hair now fell loosely around his face, the man now gave off an unexplainable air of the sinister.

"All right, I got her back in the lab." Makoto walked into the room, brushing dust off her jacket. "Now as long as Mister Tennyson is okay we can HOLY SH-" She saw Connor and stumbled back, then grabbed a knife from her belt and pointed it at him. "Stay back, don't you lay a hand on-"

"Hey, wait!" Dante grabbed Makoto's arm and slowly pushed the knife down. "Dude, what's your problem? It's just Connor."

Makoto looked up at Connor, who was breathing heavily and looking like he was going to sprint off at any moment. "All right, I believe you." She put the knife away. "Sorry, bud. It's the glasses. Well, good night."

She left, yawning. Dante gave Connor a friendly pat on the back,which made him jump. After a few minutes, the man had calmed down enough to sit down and take a deep breath. "I really don't know how these got here," he said, holding the glasses. "You can take them if you want."

Dante slowly took the glasses from him, where he noticed something that - well, hoped it had just escaped his notice before. He wished Connor good night and left, letting the door close behind him. Dante leaned against the door and looked at the glasses again.

He wasn't imagining it. The frame of the glasses, mostly a deep blue, had spots of orange rust in the shape of fingerprints.


End file.
